Are downlights a bad idea on a narrow hall? I realise fixed ones will probably make the walls look rubbish - can I get away with it if I use swivel fixings and angle them towards the walls a bit? The walls will be newly skimmed. The intention is to use led bulbs rather than halogens so I don't fry the tops of my tall friends heads and/or heat the room up in summer...
I assume that, unlike halogens, there is no advantage to using low voltage for LED bulbs?
I think downlights can look good as feature lighting, creating pools of light etc, but they are no good for main illumination, so using LEDs is probably the right way to go these days. Shallow angle lighting will always make walls look poor, so changing the angle may help. A helpful question is: what result are you trying to acheive using downlighters ? Simon.
Have you thought of wall lights. I have a hall with high ceiling, and relatively long and narrow, AND L shaped. A central pendant produced dark areas. I installed 2 wall lights, the glass 1/4 spheres type, one at each end. One 60W bulb in each. It works well.
The current lighting fixture is a single pendant. This makes some areas of the hall considerably darker than others, and also means that anyone over about 5'8" has to duck round it. Ceiling height is 7'10" - i.e. low.
I was hoping that by using several light sources instead of one I would be able to achieve a more even spread of light, and a less cramped feel in the hall.
Uplighters on the walls and a white ceiling do a good job of general illumination. The white quarter-sphere ones are good. We have them in our hall and landing. Or many more modern looking glass / steel ones around. Trouble with downlighters, you need loads to give even illumination. You can end up with kilowatts of lighting ! Simon.
Down-lighters are a bad idea for lighting anything except a shop window display or an art gallery.
Just my 2p worth
tim
Best way to illuminate any domestic area is a fluorescent tube or two. Lighting things is a different matter.
Setup as "wallwashers" they can make quite and attractive lighting arrangement. If the hall is narrow, even a conventional downlighter will give you a wall wash effect - especially if you go for a wide angle bulb (note LED ones[1] are sometimes quite narrow)
LED are low voltage anyway... even if the conversion is done in the fitting.
[1] The cheapest and nastiest are just like a bunch of "white" LEDs clustered together - these give a narrow beam of fairly blue light. The better ones are basically LED / CFL hybrids and give a more CFL type "white" light. They can be had in wider beam widths.
I think that I have to disagree with that. I have a long hallway upstairs in my house. It basically goes pretty much right from one end of the house to the other. I have a total of five 20 watt low voltage halogen downlights set in the ceiling of the part that is fully closed in i.e. not part of the large stairwell, which is also lit by a further set of five of the same, and they provide excellent levels of illumination, as indeed do the ones in the stairwell.
Arfa
aka "a landing"?
I have a long landing downstairs. (At least if someone leaves a roller skate at the top of the stairs) Simon.
But you are not using the usual 50W lamps that people normally buy. I fitted
3x20W downlighters in a hallway the other day. The light was spread out quite well and the customer way very happy (they wanted 6 lights but I talked then into having just the 3 to start with).
If you like, but I'm not sure it would be right to do so ... When I were a nipper like, me mam used to refer to the bit where the stairs 'landed' at the top, as "the landing". It was a rather squarish area that had doors opening off of all sides to the bedrooms and bathroom and bog. In my house, it's a bit different. At the top of the stairs, there is a bedroom door immediately in front of you, and a door to bathroom in a short 'stub' corridor to the left. But turn right, and you are in a 'strip' that you really can't describe as anything other than a corridor. A further bunch of doors open off this to the left and right, and another at the far end.
Arfa
That may be the case. I have had them there for years. When I bought them, they were typical B&Q fare. Low voltage 20 watters were the norm, and they came in sets of three or five. The threes usually had a conventional iron core mains tranny running them, and the fives had a small switcher to run them, presumably because at 100 watts total draw, an iron tranny would be starting to get unrealistically chunky and heavy with a rating of 8 amps or so. I actually have lots of these lights around the house, and am very happy with the levels and pattern of illumination that they give. Long may the nicely coloured halogen bulbs remain available for them. In saying that, I did once buy some replacement bulbs that had a very tight angled beam, and they weren't so good, but the typical 'pound shop' ones are fine.
Arfa
We had "the landing" which had three bedroom doors and the bathroom door, and then "the little landing" which was one step lower than the landing, but one higher than the top step of the stairs ... seems rather odd that a 4' square section of floor had its own name!
We still refer to the bit at the top as "the landing", and the flat bit four steps down (where the stairs turn 180 degrees) as the "half landing".
Ah yes ! I'd forgotten the term 'half landing'. I too have a flat bit where the stairs turn 180 degrees, but I don't think that I have ever referred to it by any specific name. The house where I lived as a kid, had a flat bit about 2/3 the way up, where the stairs turned through 90 degrees, and I'm pretty sure that my dad used to call that a 'half landing'
Arfa
En el artículo , Bob Eager escribió:
We called it the quarter-landing, dunno why.
I would guess that it relates to the location. A half is somewhere near the middle, a quarter is nearer the end.
Chris
Wouldn't a quarter landing be where the stairs turn 90 degrees and a half landing be one where they turn 180 degrees?
Yep:
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